GENERAL ISSUE SEPT 27 IT

GENERAL ISSUE SEPT 27 IT

;JP;
ANPAc..r..
IT-knowledge-acceptance

JP/ /

Tips on gaining knowledge and acceptance

By Onno W. Purbo

JAKARTA (JP): Rapid advances in Information Technology (IT)
may revolutionize ways of gaining knowledge and acceptance in the
IT professional world.

A shift in mind-set and education curriculum should be made in
a short time, or one may seriously be left behind. Rapid advances
in technology open up huge IT job opportunities.

For those wishing to find IT jobs in Indonesia, one can simply
subscribe to various lowongan (vacancy) mailing lists at
yahoogroups.com or lowongan.net to be flooded by 10-20 IT
lowongan opportunities daily. Not to mention the daily huge
numbers of ads in various newspapers in Jakarta, Singapore and
Malaysia seeking IT professionals. Thus, there are too many IT
job opportunities with unfortunately too few qualified human
resources to fill them.

Unfortunately, most computer science teachers, as well as the
national curriculum, seem to be slow in responding to these rapid
advances in the IT world. As a simple checklist, is there any
formal education for those wishing to learn about PHP, Java
Script, WML, C++, SQL, ASP, or BGP Routing? The answer,
unfortunately, is no.

An awful state of affairs, due simply to a lack of motivation
by educational institutions to keep up with the latest advances
in Information Technology as well as requirements by the
Indonesian Ministry of Education to follow the ancient national
IT curriculum that results in lower accreditation levels. Thus,
to be frank, no one can rely on formal education to gain
knowledge or acceptance within the IT community or to survive in
the real IT world.

In other words, one may unfortunately gain nothing from an
expensive formal IT education. This forces one to seek knowledge
from other sources to survive. In reality, most IT knowledge is
informally obtained among IT practitioners either through
discussions, open source CD-ROMs or various types of Internet
delivery media.

Job opportunities

Having IT knowledge will open a gateway into a vast field of
jobs and opportunities. For example, it is common at various
websites for the owners to make available a link to job vacancies
in their companies.

Professional C++, web, SQL programmers and network security
experts (also known as hackers) may be the most wanted
professionals in the IT world. Sadly, none of their knowledge was
gained through formal education.

Those professionals are mostly mobile, with laptop at hand and
other electronic gadgets, and will have monthly earnings of at
least US$500-1000. An income level like that can be reached by
those who work hard and acquire a specialized IT skill over a
period of two years to four years, based on observation of my
students.

The real pro may get away with a couple of US$10,000 project
based fees.

Those students who seek high marks in their class will not
gain much in the real world. The successful ones are those who
strive to unlock IT knowledge beyond what their university can
teach them.

IT and the Internet really help in opening up the gateway to a
vast pool of applicable new knowledge; those who manage to
acquire this knowledge during their school years could easily
pass the US$75 monthly salary level aimed at by fresh graduates.

GNU Public License (GPL) at http://www.gnu.org is the key in
IT knowledge dissemination in the world today. GNU-type licensing
enables one to put the whole source code in the public domain and
lets others learn how to perform the art of computing. The
copyleft movement is characterized by these sorts of movement;
rather than relying on the copyright scheme.

Linux is one of the best examples of the impact of open
sources and open knowledge towards the advances of IT development
by IT communities worldwide. Open source and open knowledge
enables one to tap the state of the art development of the code
as well as to learn how the coding is done in real time. All the
code can be downloaded from various sites, such as,
www.redhat.com, www.mandrake.com, www.freshmeat.org and many
other sites.

Knowledge on open sources is written and openly put on the
Internet, such as, www.linuxdoc.org, http://pandu.dhs.org, to
enable others to tap in to the state-of-the-art knowledge on
Linux and open sources. Open lectures and distance learning seems
to be much more open in the IT world; a real example is the MIT's
lecture notes at:
http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/org/a/acs/www/acaduces2.html
or the OpenCourseware initiative at http://web.mit.edu/ocw/.

Those wishing to update on various e-courses via e-mail can
visit http://virtual.net.uy/netfree.html. In addition to openly
distributed explicit IT knowledge in e-papers and e-book form,
one may gain knowledge by actively engaging in various open IT
discussion groups on the Internet. Thus,www.yahoogroups.com might
be the highest-hit mailing list server on the Internet, one can
freely participate in a vast pool of e-mail discussion groups to
discuss and solve problems with other experts at distance.

The Indonesian Linux community groups can be easily found in
various mailing lists hosted by linux.or.id and can be seen at
http://www.linux.or.id. Tacit knowledge is distributed through
these mailing list discussion groups. Thus, having this knowledge
easily accessible at hand, it is only a question of time to
become an expert in the IT world for those who persist in reading
and working on the code.

Getting IT knowledge is not sufficient to survive. In the old
days, university certificate and degrees from prestigious schools
would ensure one could gain public acceptance and consequently a
good job. Having an aged national IT curriculum at present, one
must learn the hard way and it is an art in itself to gain
community acknowledgement and acceptance. In other words, one
needs to prove one's specialty skill to the community.

Grade certificates

One of the expensive ways to gain public acceptance is through
industrial certificates such as Microsoft's MCP, MCSE, MCT or
Cisco's CCNA. Some IT industrial-grade certificates can be
obtained online at, http://www.brainbench.com,
http://www.cert21.com, http://www.examsimulators.com. Normally,
US$100 is needed to get one of these certificates. Well, it is a
good investment considering a couple of thousands of dollars
monthly income would then potentially be available.

Fortunately, there are alternative, inexpensive ways to gain
acknowledgement and acceptance from the communities. One of the
easiest ways is actively to answer questions raised in various
open Internet mailing lists. Only those who have the knowledge
can regularly answer many of these questions. An ability to
answer questions should be complemented by actively writing in
various IT magazines and, if possible, published books.

Gradually, one will receive acknowledgement from the
community. The wider the dissemination of answers, articles and
books, the greater the community acceptance that will be
received. A consensus among the community will develop regarding
one's expertise. At that point, one need not worry about seeking
jobs, as jobs will find the best of the best automatically.

It may seem easy to do. With rapidly advancing information
technology, gaining the knowledge and acceptance from the
community is an art in itself. Unfortunately, in real life, it
may take years (at least 3 years to 4 years), consistently
sitting in front of a computer connected to the Internet and
actively engaged in various Internet-based activities and virtual
discussions. Those with persistence and huge self-determination
over a long period of time will gain the knowledge and, at the
end, survive.

However, survival is not enough, as only those who produce and
pass knowledge on to others will occupy the high ground.
Fortunately, IT, the Internet and other electronic means enable
anyone to efficiently share his knowledge at low cost with others
based on copyleft movement -- a snowball effect that, in turn,
rapidly speeds up the knowledge cycle.

Ultimately, the old paradigm inherent in a knowledge cycle
based on an ancient national curriculum will be replaced by a
more efficient knowledge cycle based on a copyleft movement
driven by the existence of IT, the Internet and other electronic
means.

Community acknowledgement will replace the old-style
university degree and certificate. Only those able to produce and
share knowledge will occupy the highest positions in a knowledge-
based society. A society that should ideally be established for
future generations.